Page 8 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

Rage cuts through the stimulation of my own hand. I want more. I want to part her legs and slide into the waiting heat between. I want to watch her eyes widen as I call upon my familiars and let them slide over her naked flesh as I dive between her thighs and suck from her a release so great and terrible that she won’t even notice the scales sliding over her, keeping her pinned in place for me.

So beautiful is she. With her silver hair and eyes like cutting moonstones and storm clouds. My release slices up my spine, and a sigh escapes my lips. Beneath me, her lashes twitch, barely noticeable. Does she even know I’m still here?

My mouth tingles with the urge to lean over and turn her head back further. To take her full rose-colored lips with my own and truly taste her. A mortal. A Goddess. Neither means much to me. But she—she is wholly different.

It is in my nature to lust over pretty things that amuse me. It is my folly that they all eventually lose their shine. Yet even coated in blood and grime, I find her fascinating still. No loss in her glow, only a temporary reprieve from the light.

With one final stroke, my shaft leaps against my palm and I release a long, low hiss as my cum jerks from my cockhead. Thick, pale ropes rain down over her back and only then does she blink, finally, as if she feels something.

Breath saws in and out of my chest as I wait for the fluid to take effect. A moment passes. Then two. I frown as my cum sits over her blood and wound-marked back. Nothing.

Another silent curse. Damn it. I tuck my now spent cock quickly back into my trousers and lace them up but leave the belt as I, instead, lift my forearm to my mouth. A concentrated flash of power and I channel some of my familiar’s features. Twin spikes of fangs protrude from my gums, punching out as I sink them into my own flesh.

“What—” She doesn’t finish her hoarse, half there, question.

I rip the flesh clean off my own muscle and blood pours down my arm, flowing over her back. A choked scream echoes from her lips, her body jerking and then collapsing in the next instant as unconsciousness pulls her under.

Yes, I suppose that’s not a shock. Not after all that she’s been through. It’s more surprising that she’s managed to remain conscious as long as she has. I shake my head and use my hands to smear my blood over her wounds and flesh, painting her in me. My cum. My blood. My fluids heating as they touch her. Finally.

Within seconds, my arm begins to tingle as I heal. The skin knitting back together. Something sour scents the air as I peer down the little mortal’s spine.

Acidic. Floral. Wrong. I sniff again and then taste the air with my tongue before hissing and nearly leaping away from her and off the bed entirely.

I bound onto my feet, my upper lip peeled back over my fangs as I glare down at the mess of her back. Even as my blood and cum soaks into her open wounds, little droplets of purple rise. I know what the damn stuff is without touching it. There’s another scent below that acrid one, something far more telling. I blink. It cannot be right. It must be my Divinity that I smell there. My head tilts to the side, though, as I stare down at her back for another long moment. Yes … my Divinity.

My attention peels away from her back to glance towards her face. The Terra’s dark brows are scrunched in discomfort, her lips parted as she pants even in sleep. My blood is already working. I can tell as the strain on her face eases slightly. Still, it will be a few days before she’s fully ready to return to her duties, before she’s well enough for me to interrogate her.

I shove a hand up my face and through my hair, gripping the strands and debating pulling them out altogether. In the next moment, I drop my fingers and instead peel off my tunic, the wash of cream the only color on me. I redress the unconscious Terra in it, my fingers skimming her sides—to the clear outline of her ribs—as I pull it down.

Cold fury fills me. Unanswered questions spin through my mind. I take a step back and then another and another.

The window beckons me as my method of entering and exiting if I am to keep my presence here a secret. No doubt, Ruen’s little stunt this morning before the public lashing of our Terra has the Academy faculty watching us with far more hawkish eyes.

I turn away from the little mortal once more and buckle my belt as I stride toward the glass pane. My skin tingles as I prepare to shift. I pause once, though, and look back at her.

When she wakes, she’ll have much to explain. She better pray to far kinder Gods than the ones in this world because there’s only so long I’ll be able to hold myself back from demanding to know why the fuck there’s poison in her blood after such a harsh punishment.

And if Axlan is responsible—if he and Dolos conspired to lace that damned whip with it—well, I’ve been waiting for far too long to kill our wardens, and she is about to give me the perfect excuse.

Chapter 6

Kiera

My back still aches with a fierceness that only being whipped into unconsciousness can cause. After the night Kalix snuck into my room and did whatever it was he’d done—something I can hardly remember—the temporary alleviation of my pain is gone. Though I can feel my skin knitting back together, slower than usual thanks to the poison steeping in my blood, the reminder of my agony lingers, swollen and raw. The worst kind of pain I’ve ever encountered even more so than the torture that had been part of my training in the Underworld.

The Belladonna works. Too well, if I’m honest. Perhaps, a less potent poison would have at least had me up and out of bed by now, pretending as if I was weak and in pain, but not actually being weak and in pain. I silently curse myself for my own inadequacy because that’s all I can do.

Now, I’m drowsing against my cot, my back to the wall rather than to the door or the open air above me, a habit of facing all manner of exits and entrances to the room. I hadn’t so much as fallen asleep before Kalix had come and gone as I’d passed out, face down on the bed, too swept up in the scorching agony at my back to do much else.

I’d passed out after Kalix, too, before I could adjust my body, before the training beaten into me could take effect. The fact that it’s been two days since and I’m still this way is more of a cause for concern than the actual whipping itself. If I can’t heal quickly then I’m as good as a sitting duck. A dead sitting duck if someone finds out the truth about me or they decide that leaving a punished Terra alive is too much generosity on their stone-cold Divine hearts.

When I feel a rush of cool air against my cheeks, my eyes pop open. The door moves, gaping with such concentrated slowness and silence that can only mean someone with Divinity is entering my room. That—plus I was pretty sure I’d managed to crawl up from my bed at some point and lock the damn thing before falling into unconsciousness again. I can still recall the sharp staggering steps I’d taken towards it and the way my knees had nearly buckled when I’d finally made it back to my bed.

Lock or no lock, I know it makes no difference if someone truly wants to get in here and get to me. That one tiny barrier, though, does its job. It alerts me to a change in the atmosphere. That someone has infiltrated, and my body tenses all over as my heart begins to race in my chest, in my ears, pounding with such gusto that I swear to the Gods it’ll beat up my throat and out of my mouth.

The golden halo of hair coated in moonlight pouring in from my tiny sliver of a window that appears through the cracked door doesn’t ease the rapid thrum of my heartbeat. Theos. Reaching beneath my pillow, I wrap my hand around the hilt of my dagger. My back is on fire. Every muscle screams for relief that I can’t provide, not if we might have to fight for our life.

My heart squeezes inside me. A pang of something I’m not sure I wish to dissect rippling through my calm exterior. Had Dolos ordered him to finish me off since their damned whipping hadn’t done the job? It’d been made pretty clear to me from the Terra orientation that those who offended the Gods were not exactly asked to leave the grounds. No, they were more likely to be put in the ground … permanently. What if this is just more torture before they actually come for me? Before they decide to silence my impertinent mouth forever?

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